


Awakening

by Phoenixflames12



Series: An Endless Night: Extended Scenes [15]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 21:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15252723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: William watches his father come round from the fever that nearly cost him his life and tries to reconcile the man in the Laird's bed with the brave, untouchable soldier who has dominated his dreams(Oneshot)





	Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet corresponds with chapter 5 of my longer WW2 AU 'Vergangenheit' and was written for a writers' ask-meme over on Tumblr

 

Awakening

 

His father’s hand is cold and still, lying flat against the coverlet. The fourth and fifth fingers stick out at an odd angle and when Willie reaches a tentative finger to touch it, it does not respond.  

 

It is a stranger’s hand, he thinks, with large, thin fingers that he does not know twitching and juddering against the white linen. 

 

Each breath from the thin chest, covered by a linen night shirt is loud and laboured in the silence.

 

On the stairway, he had held Brianna’s hand and asked in a tremulous voice whether Mam would make the strange man that Faith and Brianna kept insisting was their father, better. 

 

He’d been hopeful then. Hopeful that in the safety behind the door to the Laird’s room, that blue papered haven that he was never allowed into unless he had been exceptionally good, Mam would work her magic and all would be all right again. 

 

All would be all right and his father, his real father, who was this minute, fighting the Germans would come striding into the kitchen and swing them all up into his arms as his sisters had told him that this strange, grey-faced, mongrel looking man had done before he was spirited away into a war that had been going on for as long as William can remember. 

 

‘William? Hold his hand, he… He’ll like that..’

 

His mother’s voice trailing off as she busies herself with bathing the man’s pale forehead. Through the dusky light cast by the oil lamps, William can see the slant that catches to the closed eyes framed by long, parti-coloured lashes, the slant that he sees in both of his sisters’ eyes, in his own when he looks in the mirror. 

 

His cheeks are sharp and hollow, pained with every breath and Willie clings on harder to the shivering, trembling hand that feels impossibly big in his own.

 

From somewhere in the dusky quiet, the short, sobbing breaths of one of his sisters’ punctuate the air, enveloping the world with a heavy, wet stillness that hangs like a cloak. 

 

The big, firm hand in his twitches as a ragged, gasping exhale is pulled from the cold, trembling lips and little by little, the eyes that he is half hoping, half afraid to see, crack open, glazed and unfocused as they adjust to the dim light. 

 

‘Swallowing down the lump that has lodged itself in his throat, William tightens his grip on his father’s arm and whispers: 

 

‘Are ye… Are ye better now, Da?’ 

 

* * *

 

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, questions, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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